Mitch McConnell attacks Obama jobs plan

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fiercely attacked President Barack Obama’s new jobs plan Tuesday, underscoring the enormous hurdles the White House faces as it tries to push a $450-billion bill through a hostile Congress.

“The first thing to say about this plan is it’s now obvious why the president left out the specifics last week,” said McConnell, in his first public comments on the bill since it was sent to Congress Monday. “Not only does it reveal the political nature of this bill, it also reinforces the growing perception that this administration isn’t all that interested in economic policies that will actually work.”

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POLITICO 44

The strong words come after a brief period where Republicans largely withheld their criticisms as Obama promised to push forward with a bill he said should garner bipartisan support when millions are out of work. After addressing a joint session of Congress last week, Obama unveiled the bill Monday, which includes a sweeping array of state aid, spending on infrastructure, school construction, and an array of tax breaks to encourage companies to begin hiring laid off workers.

To pay for the package, Obama proposes limiting itemized deductions to upper-income families and for eliminating oil and other subsidies.

With 47 votes in the Senate, McConnell has the power to limit GOP defections and effectively block the plan, which would likely need 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. But he predicted it would be blocked with bipartisan opposition, saying the tax increases were unacceptable and that the spending reflects proposals floated in the past.

“Claiming this bill is bipartisan may sound good if you’re out there on the campaign trail, but surely the president could come up with some proposals that both sides had not already rejected,” McConnell said.

Speaking after McConnell, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) refuted the criticism, saying that the GOP leader was not being “fair” or “just” in his attacks on the bill, calling it a “carefully constructed plan to get this economy moving.”

mcconnell has no game at all....his latest hate speak, directed more at the american people than obama, underscores the complete lack of empathy that mcconnell and his disgusting excuse for a political party really have for the american people. this is the same mouthpiece that stood tall with the "you're either with us or you're the enemy" hawks....and no his branded hate speak is even more toxic.

if politico had anything other than profitability in mind for this website, they would call out mcconnell for the treasonist human being that he is.

Go get 'em, stoneface McConnell. Only 46 million on poverty line or below. What the hell screw this job bill up so can shoot for 50 mil. But make sure that all repubs and dems keep their high falutin life style. Why should the poor slobs even exist?. There a drain on the country unless there is a war or 2 and then we can use them for cannon fodder. What a bunch of B.S. the GOP really is. I wasn't here for the first civil war but may be here for the one that is brewing via D.C.

The only thing Republicans have going for them is a weak economy and high unemployment which they created. So far they have done everything they can to block or slow improvement. They have no plan for job growth just cuts in programs for the working class increasing unemployment and job layoff. Under the real working class warfare, people actually suffer, lose their homes, go without food or medication to make ends means. On the GOP (Greed On Parade) manufactured version of "class warfare" whereby the rich are taxed, nobody suffers, nobody loses their homes, few would even notice. For the poorly-educated and/or bigoted, Republicans have historically NEVER represented the working class and the latest plague of "born-again deficit hawks," in apparently a coma during the spending spree of the last conservative Bush-Cheney Republican regime (hardly ever mentioned), have never been more blatant in their defense and promotion of the rich at the expense of everybody else. Remember, under Republicans, 80% of income growth over the last 20 years went to the top one percent. Any working class American voting Republican not only hurt themselves, their families and the rest of us, but supported a political party that consistently causes pain and suffering not only in America but globally. God knows all about it.

10 years of higher taxes for a one-time stimulus. OMG. Finally .. proof that the president has hired Popeye’s friend Wimpy as an economic advisor … “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”. As even more proof, Wimpy adds gravitas to the administration.

Looks like it took a few days for the GOP to get their poll numbers back on potential talking points.

Mitch McConnell is the epitamy of everything that is wrong with Washington. This guy puts politics before country constantly and seriously needs to go. Then again the onky job the GOP cares about is Obama's. At least McConnell was transparent enough (or dumb enough) to admit that right from the get-go. Their game is simple; Trip up Obama as much as possible, then complain he can't run.

The original "stimulus" was roundly criticized at the time for "not being big enough" but that was all Obama could get past the lockstep opposition of the GOP. Now they LOVE to say the stimulous failed, even though it didn't. It stopped the crash of our country. It just didn't lift us up that fast. Hmmmm, makes ya wonder if they had passed what economists said we needed what may have happened? For all the talk about we "spent 800 Billion", they leave out that 50% of that was tax cuts, something the GOP always screams for.

These guys create the political death match, shake consumer confidence, and then scream that the economy is in a freefall. They can't afford to have the economy get better because Obama may get the credit so they want to let the economy crash and hope they can convince the public that it's Obama's fault.

Wow. That's a patriotic thing to do. It is tme for the GOP to put "country first."

The "turtle" is a terrorist, having held the country hostage to preserve tax cuts for the super-rich.

McConnell has no intention of doing ANYTHING to improve the economy, because he just wants to defeat Obama.

The GOP feels a weak economy is their best bet for 2012 victory, so they will do all they can to keep the economy crappy.

Party before country - not my idea of patriotism.

Your entire post consists of shallow talking points.

After a full 965 days in office, Obama has for the first time submitted to Congress a written jobs plan that can be scored by the CBO. Obama proposes huge tax increases which, according to the Keynesian theory embraced by Obama, will put a drag on an already weak economy.

Bringing a bill of this scope and impact to a vote prior without serious Congressional scrutiny is not prudent fiscal management, yet Obama tells Congress, a co-equal branch of government, “No delays. I’m sending this bill to Congress today, and they ought to pass it immediately.”

Certainly you must have been paying attention when Bill Clinton turned over to George W. Bush and the Republican Congress three years of budget surplus and they turned that into the mess our Federal budget is in today. According to the Congressional Budget office numbers, $7.1 trillion of the deficit is the result of spending signed into law by Bush, $1.3 trillion by Obama. That's OK, facts aren't a lot of people's "strong suit".

If this is what Durbin calls a “carefully constructed plan to get this economy moving.” then God help us should the Democrats ever not be careful.

One never knows. We might end up with legislation like Obamacare, that hastily and shoddily cobbled act which to this very date, no one, not even those who voted for it, fully knows what's in it, or its costs, or its how it will work...they are still attempting to repair the thing...and it isn't even out of warranty.

And then there is the "Trillion Dollar Hurry Up and Pass Stimulus 1.0"...so "carefully constructed" as to not permit unemployment to rise above 8%...

I think we are beginning to see the quality of Soviet American legislative craftsmanship on full display...carefully advertised of course.

Why do Republicans hate America and the middle class? Why do they continue to vote against the best interest of working families, only to help their rich friends continue to get break after break and handout after handout. It is despicable that these people were elected to represent the people, because they could care less about them.

Add $120 billion to the debt to rebuild roads, schools and infrastructure in Iraq? SURE. Lots of Republicans voted for THAT bill. Spend $30 billion on U.S. schools and infrastructure after finding spending offsets to pay for them? HELL NO!

Republicans are a cancerous disease and must be eradicated for the country to survive.

Speaking after McConnell, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) refuted the criticism, saying that the GOP leader was not being “fair” or “just” in his attacks on the bill, calling it a “carefully constructed plan to get this economy moving.”

A carefully constructed plan? Really??? Seriously?? If that's the case, why wasn't it introduced months ago?? If it's so carefully constructed then please explain to me what the follow-on work will be once those 'shovel ready' jobs are complete. True jobs are ones that folks can plan their lives around, not temporary jobs that will be good for only 6-12 months or the current election cycle for the candidate.

Where in this plan are the jobs for folks such as those 30,000 people who just lost their job at Bank of America or the 1200 people that were recently let go from that green company Solyndra which is now bankrupt and that Obama touted as a 'Prime Example' of how the stimulus plan is working for small business. Not to mention the fact that it is under federal investigation as well.

Barack Obama told Congress that Washington “can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.”

Even Washington doesn’t believe him.

Thursday’s not-ready-for-primetime speech by the not-ready-for-primetime president was a forceful case for stupidity, which by definition amounts to doing the same thing and expecting different results. The stimulus failed to stimulate. The answer, so obvious to the backers of the original stimulus, is more stimulus. Only in the bizarro world of liberalism is a program’s inefficacy considered a compelling argument to expand that program.

A jobs program is an oxymoron. The government can remove money (and thus jobs) from the private economy. But to infuse money into the private economy, the government must first take it out—in taxes, loans, or inflation. In the tradition of the Recovery Act (which helped push us further into recession) and the Affordable Care Act (which made medicine more expensive), the American Jobs Act will kill jobs.

Milton Friedman famously wrote that “the only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of its predictions with experience.” The Obama administration infamously prophesied that failure to pass the original stimulus would send the unemployment rate above eight percent. It ultimately eclipsed ten percent, and has remained above nine percent for all but a few months of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Reality is a rude affront to grand ideas.

Friedman, one of the Blue Collar Intellectuals included in my forthcoming book, waited tables, sold fireworks by the roadside, and peddled encyclopedias door-to-door before winning a Nobel Prize in economics. Obama collected signatures for Ralph Nader’s NYPIRG and taught in a law school before becoming president. Notice a difference?

The real world grounds ideas. Ideological fantasies send minds into the ether.

People armed with programs have usually been programmed. What they lack in ideas they make up in ideology. Ideologues don’t think. Their ideologies do this for them. Like a robot, the ideologue’s mental circuits overheat when confronted with a situation he hasn’t been programmed for.

It may seem strange that a man with so many plans doesn’t have a plan B. The ideologue is so confident in the path that he doesn’t consider the need for an alternate route. Bill Clinton, a politician, successfully pivoted after his 1994 midterm election debacle. Even Lenin introduced his market-oriented New Economic Program after a more pure Communism failed so horribly. But more than two years after his stimulus-turned-sedative, Barack Obama is back with more of the same. Halftime adjustments, adapting to overcome, responding to the unpredictability of events—this is foreign to the makeup of the programmed presidency.

The proposal of a second stimulus is a tacit admission that the first stimulus failed. So is the president’s deliberate refusal to call the second stimulus a “stimulus,” a word conspicuously missing from his speech. The term is so associated with failure in the minds of voters that the president doesn’t use it anymore.

The programmed president can change labels. He seems incapable of altering substance.

More than a dozen times during his speech to Congress, President Obama implored some variant of “pass this jobs bill.” At least a used car salesman shows you the product before strong-arming you into buying it. When he demanded, “pass this bill right away,” there wasn’t a bill to be passed. Not until after the speech did the public even learn of the price tag: $450 billion.

One man’s plan for an economy with 312 million moving parts is an exercise in narcissism. The government needs to get out of the economy’s way. But an economy organically healing itself just isn’t within the vision of visionaries. It seems a slur against their genius. So planners plan and people suffer—providing the planners justification for future plans.

From the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the Affordable Care Act to the American Jobs Act, the economy has struggled under the weight of programs. The planner has a program for every problem. The planner fails to see the problems from every program.

Offering a scaled-down stimulus so soon after the stimulus-on-steroids flamed out demonstrates that liberalism is more bankrupt than the federal government. America needs a president who can think outside of the teleprompter.

You don't get to complain about talking points and then use Newts inane talking points.

The GOP loves to spout lie after lie to uneducated constituencies to lazy or ideoligical to seperate fact from fiction. This is how you end up calling Obama a "socialist" for bailing out the auto industry. Remember "He wants control over GM"? Even though the government was paid back and dumped their shares as quick as they could. Forget that all he ACTUALLY did was secure the American peoples financial interest, save 2 million jobs, and get out as fast as he could.

That is how you get "Obama's bank bailout" even though it was George Bush that bailed out the banks in October of 2008, months before Obama even took office.

That is how you get "Not raising the debt ceilng won't effect us at all" even though EVERYONE with a brain understood that the effects would be devastating for our country and even the debate and brinksmanship caused our credit rating to be downgraded, (as directly stated by the company that downgraded us( and shook consumer confidence which directly impacted August's job numbers.

That is how you get the GOP to scream they want to "cut the of government", in other words, LAY OFF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WORKERS in the worst economy in 75 years. They already hit Obama on jobs even though 100% of the losses are coming from GOVERNMENTS LAYING OFF. (The private sector has been adding jobs EVERY MONTH for nearly year.)

That is how you get the "cut taxes on job creators" talking point, even though taxes are there LOWEST IN 50 YEARS and corporations are sitting on RECORD PROFITS. After George Bush lowered taxes and cleared regulations did we have a boom? Nope. They laid off workers to the tune of 750,000 a month.

"If it's so carefully constructed then please explain to me what the follow-on work will be once those 'shovel ready' jobs are complete."

OK. Let me explain how this works. Follow the bouncing ball OK? Whenyou hire people. They are WORKING, paying taxes etc. They BUY STUFF. That creates DEMAND which then creates MORE JOBS to fill that DEMAND. The additional tax base allows overnments to FIX OTHER STUFF and stop layoffs, creating confidence and more demand.

Of course, the way to kill all of that is to scare the crap out of the people you hired, convince them their job is temporary so they don't feel confident enough to buy anything. Then your scenario becomes the very self-fulfillng prophesy you've been hoping for.

NEWSFLASH: MOST jobs are "at will" and are not contracts for x amount of years. Been that way for a while now. You want guarantees, join a union... oh wait, GOP killed most of the.

"Where in this plan are the jobs for folks such as those 30,000 people who just lost their job at Bank of Amerca"

First of all, it isn't the President's job to micro-manage everything i the country, but more importantly Bank of America didn't just lay off 30,000 people. They are PLANNING to down by 30,000, mostly through attrition (retirements, people quitting etc. OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS. Some of that could even change if the economy picked up again.

Look. Our economy is based largely on consumer spending. That depends on consumer confidence. The GOP has done a great job at killing consumer confidence. Even when the economy was improving they would talk it down. The debt ceiling dabacle was devastatting (and VERY importnt for one reason; they ALWAYS KNEW they had to raise it but brought our country to the brink anyway only to raise it inthe end)

Our country ws beginning to recover last year. Since the GOP took congress, consumer confidence has fallen dramatically, and the economy appears stalled. Of course, it's all Obama's fault. Has nothing at all to do with the GOP's brinsmanship or screaming boogy woogy woogy at every tuen scaring the bejeebers out of the public and at a bare minimum convincing the American people that government can't get anythig done.